The Princeton, Franny & Me
“Is there a Mr. Moore in the house?” Phil Matalucci’s sonorous voice boomed from the stage of the Banjo Room at the Princeton Hotel on a summer night in 1976. Wednesday nights were Amateur Night, and Phil, bedecked in a lily-white sport coat, peach-colored pants, hair combed straight back, emceed the evening with the flair and personality of a true showman. “There’s a lady in the parking lot yelling for Moore!” Phil told this same joke before every Amateur Night for some 30 years … and always got a huge laugh. Even the band laughed. Wednesday night in Avalon belonged to Phil Matalucci and the Banjo Room.
In 1968, I spent two weeks with my family in Avalon. When the vacation was over, I took it upon myself to knock on every bar and restaurant door looking for a job playing the piano. I was in high school and “too young” to work in a bar, according to everyone except Phil. I ended up that summer playing breakfast music, lunch music, dinner music, and then bussing dinner tables as the organist played sing-along tunes in the Fountain Lounge of the Princeton. The Le Roy Bostic Mellow Aires played Friday and Saturday nights … these guys were the epitome of class and sounded just like the Mills Brothers, a group I had never heard of until then. I learned much from Le Roy Bostic.
In 1969, as Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon and many of the Princeton guests gathered in the hotel lobby to watch on a small black-and-white, the Princeton was about to undergo great change. Phil and his brother Tony, along with nephew Phil Judyski and other insiders of the family, were watching as the crowds were getting younger and the popularity of Avalon was growing. It was decided that space in the parking lot would go and an “annex” with a liquor store and bar would be built.
In 1970, Phil asked me if I wanted to become the piano player at the new bar, and of course I jumped at the chance. That summer, a great many folks from South Philadelphia began to vacation in Avalon. One such visitor was Franny Green, a truly fantastic banjo player. Franny was entertaining at the time in Longport and living with his bachelor buddies in Sea Isle, and the entire group would descend upon the “Little P” and ask me for sing-along tunes, and Franny would get on the world’s smallest stage next to me, and he taught me to play the tunes, and the place would go crazy. I mean CRAZY.
The popularity of the Little Princeton quickly spread and Phil managed to persuade Franny to leave Longport and come entertain in Avalon. Franny and I were musical partners and the fun was nonstop. Other musicians from string bands and the like all came to the Little P to play with Franny, all on the world’s smallest stage. Some Sunday afternoons the bar would be so jammed you could barely breathe. Phil Matalucci saw another opportunity; and he took it.
There was a driveway separating the Princeton from the Little P. The new plan was to construct a new building that would utilize the driveway, connecting the Princeton and the annex, and wrap around the back of the liquor store, creating an L-shaped space for another bar. Thus was born Franny Green’s Banjo Room. And a new era of entertainment and fun came to be in Avalon in the summer of 1974.